The Easton Area High School yearbook for 2010 greeted students and faculty this week with quotes from famous authors and world leaders scattered throughout its pages. On page 190, leading the senior section, came this quote: “And in the last analysis, success is what matters.” It was credited to Adolf Hitler.

The Morning Call notes that Michael Koch, a principal at the school, said the inclusion of the Adolf Hitler quote in the yearbook “tainted the yearbook and the memories” but was also “an honest mistake.” One supposes it’s an honest mistake if the school’s world history class is so weak they failed to mention small details. Such as how Adolf Hitler sent millions of people to concentration camps, 12 million of whom died for things like being Jewish, Polish, Gypsies, or gay.

The Hitler quote in the Easton Area High School yearbook was drawn from “The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership” by Joachim C. Fest. Just to be clear, Fest’s book on Adolf Hitler and the other leaders of the Nazi movement did not champion them whatsoever.

Whether Adolf Hitler really said “And in the last analysis, success is what matters” is under some question. But Hitler’s name in the Easton Area High School yearbook being brushed aside as “an honest mistake” by its principal beggars the imagination.

The quote isn’t even reasonable for a high school yearbook. It’s a restatement of “The end justifies the means.” Are they trying to tell the students that so long as they win, it doesn’t matter if they break the rules in a destructive fashion? Or hurt people?

Of course, the final irony of that quote is that Adolf Hitler failed in the end. Those Easton Area High School yearbook editors should have stuck to quoting people who actually achieved what they set out to do.

And if a student snuck the Adolf Hitler quote in as a joke and hoping it’d get past an overworked yearbook advisor, Easton’s principal ought to take a last analysis of his or her chances for success in getting a diploma and not make an honest mistake in the process.